Dust to Dust
by jasinwalkerland
Summary: She's barely alive when he finds her alone in the woods. Tortured by the men in her former camp, Anna Olsen is dangerously close to dying when Rick Grimes finds her and takes her back to Hershel Greene's farm. She's not sure how she can ever repay the man who saved her life, but little does she know she's already returned the favor just by coming into his life. [TW: Abuse]


**Disclaimer**: I don't own The Walking Dead. Sadface.

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** PROLOGUE**

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"I can't live like this anymore, Lori. We can't live like this." Rick paused and looked up at his wife with a cold, penetrating stare. "Is there anything else I should know about?"

She grew uncomfortable under his hard blue eyes and after a long moment, her gaze fell to the ground in regretful shame. "Yes," she whispered with a nod. "Shane and I..."

And just like that, like the instant flick of a light switch, everything that he'd been desperately trying to hold onto slipped through his fingers, crumbling into pieces around him.

It wasn't like he hadn't suspected once it before. Of course he'd suspected it. He wasn't stupid and he certainly wasn't blind. He'd caught onto them pretty damn quickly.

Rick vividly remembered that first night in Atlanta. He'd been sitting around the campfire with Carl laying beside him and Lori wrapped up in his arms.

He'd noticed the way that Shane looked at Lori and the way Lori refused to look back at Shane. Even from across the flames, Rick felt their tension—thick and suffocating.

Of course he never said a word about it to either one of them, but as time passed and the days went on, the strange behavior they displayed when they were around each other only continued to add to Rick's suspicion that something had been going on between the two of them, something that had been forced to come to an abrupt and unexpected halt the moment that Rick stepped out of that truck and back into their lives. "Yeah I know," he murmured through slightly clenched teeth. He took a step back from his wife, letting his gaze wander from hers. "Of course I know. You thought that I was dead." It was such a brutal blow. He felt like all the wind had been knocked out of him. His heart had been shattered beyond repair, but somehow, Rick managed to find enough strength in himself to hide his raging emotions and keep a calm exterior. "Right?"

Lori reached up and wiped away a tear that had fallen down the side of her face. It was quickly replaced by another. "Yes," she confessed, her voice broken and small. "Yes."

Rick nodded and deciding that was all he needed to hear from her, he turned around and started walking away from the wired cattle fence where they had been standing.

"Rick?" Lori hoarsely called out his name to stop him. "Rick, please. Wait. I know you're upset and I don't blame you, but shouldn't we at least try and talk about this? Fix this?"

He firmly shook his head, refusing to turn back and look at her. "I can't," he replied shortly over his shoulder. "I'm sorry. But I just can't."

He could feel his wife's sorrowful doe eyes burning into his back as he swiftly made his way off of the farmland and towards the dense green trees that stood in the distance.

It wasn't like this was something that he could just sweep under the rug and ignore, it was something that he'd have to face and sort out with his wife.

But he didn't know how.

He couldn't imagine how they would be able to fix this.

He couldn't talk to her, he couldn't be around her—he couldn't even look at her without wanting to break something.

If anything, he needed to be completely alone with his thoughts for a while. He needed some time to think about how he was going to handle this shit sack of a situation.

And besides, he was afraid of what he might say or do if he happened to run into Shane around the farm before he had the chance to cool down.

Rick's hand rested lightly on the grip of his pistol that was tucked away in the holster on his belt as he disappeared into the woods that surrounded Hershel Greene's farm.

He normally carried a knife in his belt seeing as Hershel stood firmly against the use of guns on his property, but as Rick's opposite hand reached for it, he realized it was gone.

He furrowed a brow but then remembered that he'd left it back in his tent, completely forgetting about it when he found those empty pill boxes on the table next to the bed.

He recalled setting down his knife before grabbing the pill boxes and going straight towards the fields to find and confront Lori.

Rick had never been more furious, he'd never felt so betrayed. But Lori's futile attempt at secretly terminating her pregnancy wasn't what angered him anymore. But it was the fact that she'd engaged in a romantic affair with his best friend and the odds were that the child she'd be carrying for the next nine months wasn't his. It was Shane's.

The two of them must have carried on for quite some time before Rick found them back in Atlanta. He knew the chances of that baby being his were slim to none.

Rick continued walking deeper and deeper into the woods only stopping when he was at a point where he was certain that nobody would be able to find him. He was alone.

He let out a long, exhausted sigh and leaned against a tree. His legs suddenly felt unable to support his weight and he slid against the trunk until he was sitting on the ground.

His wife and his best friend. It was a tough pill for him to swallow.

Shane had always been like a brother to him, he loved that man as if he were his own flesh and blood. He was someone Rick always said he'd be willing to take a bullet for.

And Lori.

He couldn't believe that while he was going through hell and back fighting to find her, she was loving another man.

It was agonizing to think that she'd been able to move on that quickly, that she'd forgotten about him that fast.

They both wrote him off without even giving him a second thought.

Rick sighed again and looked up, squinting slightly against the bright yellow rays of sunlight that filtered through the leaves.

He loved both Lori and Shane with every single fiber of his being and that only made their betrayal even more painful for him.

This was something he'd never be able to forget. Or forgive.

"If there really is a God, then let Him forgive them for what they've done," he muttered out of bitterness. "Because I won't. I can't."

Rick let his gaze fall to the gold wedding band he wore around his finger. He took it off and held it between two fingers, observing it in the light for a moment before dropping it.

He stared at his ring lying there amid a pile of leaves and twigs, feeling a sudden urge to get up and walk away from it. And he would have, if his son hadn't come to mind.

Carl.

He frowned. His boy was only twelve years old, but he was observant.

Carl would definitely notice if he just stopped wearing his wedding ring out of the blue. And what would he think if Rick were to stop sleeping in the same tent as him and Lori?

What would he think if he started treating her differently? And Shane? What would Carl think if he suddenly noticed his father coldly distancing himself from his own best friend?

He'd already been through so much after the world had gone to shit and Rick refused to put his child through any more suffering. He couldn't even bear the thought of it.

Carl couldn't know about this, about any of this.

Rick shook his head and picked up his ring, hesitantly slipping it back onto his finger. That's when he heard it.

The sound of leaves rustling loudly nearby.

He stealthily jumped up to his feet and whipped out his pistol from its holster, suddenly on full alert as he looked around for the source of the noise. But he saw nothing.

Maybe it had just been a wandering buck? Or a couple of rabbits hopping about?

Rick stood still and waited.

After a long minute, he was just starting to buy the idea that it had only been a forest critter when he heard again, only this time, it was accompanied by a long, dragging groan.

His throat went dry. That definitely hadn't been an animal.

His pistol aimed and his finger ready to pull the trigger, Rick followed the sound and took slow, cautious steps towards the unruly bushes in front of him. Twigs crunched under his boots and he expected a walking corpse to emerge from behind the bushes and attack—but as he contined to draw closer and closer, what he found made him lower his pistol out of complete shock. It was a female walker, slumped up against a tree. Its head was dangling and a mane of long, tangled dark hair covered most of its face. It wore nothing but a large white shirt that was torn, covered in dirt and caked with grime and dark red blotches that he instantly assumed was blood.

But whether it was its own blood or someone else's he couldn't quite tell.

Even after everything that Rick had witnessed since waking up in this world, there was something about this particular walker that made a chill run up and down his spine. He'd never seen a walker just sit there when there was fresh meat standing there a few feet in front of it. But this one made no move to attack. This walker was weak, it seemed as though it was dying right there in front of him. But that wasn't possible. Or was it?

Rick took a careful step towards the corpse, and stopped at its feet, nudging its bare, bruised leg with the hard toe of his boot.

It groaned again and slowly lifted its head to look up at him.

Shocked, Rick took a clumsy step back when his eyes met the walker's. They weren't glassy or lifeless. Rather, its orbs were the color of golden honey.

It was human. _She_ was human.

She was alive. But barely.

He dropped his pistol and crouched down beside her. "Are you bit?" was the first question that escaped his lips. "Are you alright? Are you bit? Or scratched?"

She didn't respond.

Rick gently pressed the back of his hand to her forehead but realized that she didn't have a fever. Her skin felt as cold as a block of ice against his own, an odd symptom seeing as it was a sweltering summer afternoon. But even though she wasn't showing the main symptom of a fever, he went ahead and started checking her over from head to foot to see if she had any bites or anything that would indicate if she had been attacked by a walker. He couldn't find any marks of the sort, but what he did find was just as horrifying, if not worse. It was hard to tell just by looking at her because of the size of her shirt, but when he touched her, his fingers were grabbing at nothing but bones; she was so thin that he was certain it had to have been days, maybe even weeks since she last had something to eat. But that wasn't all. Every inch of exposed skin that Rick could see was covered in deep purple bruises, fresh ones that he knew had to be as painful as they looked.

The most noticeable ones that caught his eye were the ones on her legs and upper thighs. They were shaped like human fingers.

"Look at me," he said, gingerly lifting her chin with his index finger. "Can you tell me who did this to you? Are they close by?"

She whimpered. "Please..." She finally spoke, but her voice was nothing more than a soft whisper. "Please."

"Who are you? Who did this to you?"

"Please," she whispered again. "Please, just kill me already."

Rick stared at her for a moment, looking straight into her terrified eyes.

"Just kill me already," she pleaded him weakly. "Please. I'm begging you."

He looked off to the side and noticed his gun on the ground. He reached for it, picking it up and slipping it back into the holster on his belt.

"No," he shook his head. "I'm not gonna kill you. I'm not gonna do that."

Rick slipped one arm under her knees and the other around her small, frail shoulders, effortlessly lifting her up into his arms.

"You're gonna be okay," he told her. "You're gonna be okay. You're safe with me."

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**A/N:** The second season will always be my absolute favorite of the series. Therefore, this is set during season two and possibly go onto three and the first half of four.

Also, because there aren't nearly enough Rick stories around these here parts, this is going to be centered around Rick and my female OC.

Feedback and reviews are greatly, greatly appreciated! Let me know how you like this, it would definitely motivate me to continue on with this.


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